INSIDE TECHNOLOGY.

2nd medal for U. of I. professor

In a ceremony at the White House next week, several innovators will be honored as President Bush presents them with the National Medal of Technology.

But for one of the honorees, there will be more than a touch of deja vu. Nick Holonyak Jr., a University of Illinois professor of computer engineering and physics, has been there, done that.

In 1990, Holonyak was presented with the National Medal of Science by the first President Bush.

"I'm told I'm the only one to get both medals with one presented by the father and another by the son," Holonyak said.

Holonyak is one of only 13 Americans to win both medals. Paul Lauterbur, also a U. of I. professor, is another. Lauterbur was named this year as winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine for his role in developing magnetic resonance imaging technology.

Holonyak was the first to build a light-emitting diode, the solid-state device that gives off light. LEDs, as they're called, are used widely as a low-energy alternative to light bulbs and neon tubes.

Because his field of opto-electronics explores fundamental science and produces useful products, Holonyak always has straddled the fuzzy line that divides technology from science.

"When you work with semiconductors, it's different than pushing electrons through a straight wire," said Holonyak.

"In semiconductors, you yank an electron into a higher energy state, and you leave a hole behind. That hole has a positive charge, and it conducts too. You then play games with the electrons and holes, which try to annihilate each other.

"Sometimes those recombinations give off heat, sometimes light. It depends on the semiconductor material, and that's what makes things interesting."

Charting the behavior of electrons and their alter egos as they scoot through crystals grown from various materials is a basic inquiry of physics, and that's what won Holonyak his Medal of Science. Using that knowledge to build LEDs is what won the Medal of Technology.

The honor this time takes on extra significance for Holonyak because two of his former graduate students--M. George Craford and Russell Dupuis--also will receive medals at the White House.

Craford, who is chief technology officer of LumiLeds Lighting in San Jose, Calif., and Dupuis, an engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, continue to collaborate with Holonyak's research in advancing LED technology.

Biotech boom? Things are looking up for the biotechnology industry these days, reports Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. He was in Chicago recently to address a business meeting.

Prices of biotech stocks have been heading up for about nine months, and there are some 370 biotech therapies in the late stages of consideration before the Food and Drug Administration, which is a record, Feldbaum said.

"We seem to be among the first sectors to come unstuck from the rest of the economy," said Feldbaum.

The only big cloud on the horizon, he said, is the move to import drugs from abroad at lower prices, a plan supported by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Biotech therapies aren't included because they require too much care in storage and handling to be shipped around as freely as synthetic pills and potions are.

Even so, the threat to profit margins at big drug companies has investors nervous, and that anxiety is being felt by some of the small biotech firms that need financial backing, Feldbaum said.

Perhaps more worrisome, he said, is that politicians have ignored warnings from the FDA that imported drugs may be unsafe, especially if the process proves vulnerable to counterfeit products.

"This is the first time that politicians have challenged the FDA on a matter of health and safety," Feldbaum said. "It could be a dangerous precedent."